City of Jersey Village, Texas
Organization Profile
- Industry: Municipality
- Location: Harris County, Texas
- Number of Employees: Approximately 100 full-time employees and 70 part-time/seasonal employees
- Population: Approximately 8,000
- Tyler Client Since: 2000
- Tyler Products Used: Incode® ERP, MyCivic™, Incode Utility Billing, Incode Court, Tyler Notify, Tyler Content Manager™, Open Finance™, Tyler Parks and Rec™
Ready for What’s to Come — How a Texas City Was Unknowingly Prepared for Remote Operations
The city of Jersey Village was among the rest of the nation waiting for notice that businesses and its municipal offices would be closing due to COVID-19. Closing its doors on March 18, 2020, meant moving employees to working remotely and changing the way staff interacted with citizens. Luckily, this transition was nearly seamless for the municipality because of the work staff had already done to digitize day-to-day operations.
Over the years, the city has dedicated time and resources to eliminating paper and pushing everything online, creating efficient processes, streamlining operations, and building up citizen communication methods.
These efforts paid off as the city of Jersey Village was unknowingly prepared to utilize its technology with Incode®, Tyler Content Manager™, and MyCivic™ to move almost all aspects of their day-to-day workload to a digital environment.
Serving Citizens Safely
Leveraging the technology at their fingertips has served Jersey City well while several factors remained unknown during the pandemic — most importantly, keeping information flowing to citizens, which was a top priority for the city. Leveraging Tyler’s MyCivic citizen engagement app, along with its website and social media pages, the city sent push notifications, posted announcements about safety measures and office closures, tracked COVID-19 cases within their area, and informed its more than 7,000 citizens of any pertinent information.
City leadership found it most helpful for citizens to easily access this information through their app, but more critically, the city could immediately share information with citizens. Alerts are easily pushed through the MyCivic app to each citizen directly.
After seeing such success, Jersey Village is happy its residents are continuing to utilize their online payment and communication options. Using technology to navigate these unprecedented times has allowed the city to maintain safety measures without compromising transparency and communication within their community.
The Way Forward
With that in mind, the city plans to continue looking ahead to other services they can offer online, asking themselves, “How do we move some of those things into a more digital format and make it so a resident, if they want to, can fully interact with us online only?”
Though in-person services aren’t going anywhere, shifting more of their operations online will benefit citizens as well as staff for years to come. Allowing citizens to access payment information, utility services, or make service requests 24/7/365 will now be easier than ever, and staff can manage any request remotely, ensuring those needed services run uninterrupted.
While officials won’t say local government has changed for everyone, they are certain their city is forever changed and will see continual progress for online citizens' services moving forward.
The resiliency under the circumstances of such a trying year has proven that cities and organizations around the nation are able to work together whether in office or at home. Jersey Village is just one of many municipalities to see telecommuting as part of their future and will continue to take the digital landscape into consideration as they plan for the what’s ahead.
For more information, visit tylertech.com/products/Incode.